Our Blooming Adeniums!

The world is really strange. When you want something, it is always very difficult to obtain it. When you are not asking for things, they will come naturally...

My wife has been planting Adenium bonsai plants at our garden for almost a year. The plants grew but they never flowered. Before my wife went to Brisbane, she gave one of our friends an Adenium plant. After 2 weeks, it started to flower.

Guess what? This morning when I went to check our garden, I found the following beauties basking in the sun!

Something Is Eating My Plants!

Recently something happened to my ladies fingers (okra) plants. The leaves have been "eaten" by some sort of pest until they appeared "holy". Upon having a closer look, I found small little grasshoppers! These little bugs have been nibbling at my wife's plants.













I do not have any good shots of these little grasshoppers but here's one from my low resolution phone camera which could not focus clearly (especially for macro shots). If all the leaves get eaten up, my okra plants will not be able to give my 5 okras per week of free vegetables anymore! I will need to find a way to get rid of those grasshoppers! Any non-toxic way that you could think of? Feel free to comment.....thanks!

Red Little Devil

We have planted these mini cucumbers which are approximately 5cm long. They taste like normal cucumbers except small in size.


I accidentally left one behind during harvest and it grew into a "Red Little Devil". I do not think it is edible anymore since the texture became rubbery and flabby.


It is just unusual to see green cucumbers turning red when they over-ripen!

Rainy Days During Hari Raya Aidulfitri

This year I did not take any breaks to go back to Malaysia or go elsewhere for a vacation during the "Lebaran" period or Muslim New Year (Hari Raya Aidulfitri) period.


As the previous years, our factory in Palembang shutdown for a week because all the Muslim workers would not work during this festive period (despite being offered extra cash for compensation).


It was a good experience to see how Palembang is like during Lebaran but it was also a lonely one because nobody is around. The place looks deserted at 8am when I drove to the factory. I had to drop by at the factory everyday to check on security, potential roof leakages, roofing sheets flyimg off & flooding (and some other un-anticipated events that might have occurred).


Normally this period of time is the start of the drought period for Palembang, but instead it poured since the evening on the eve of Hari Raya until the next afternoon.


The rain was so heavy that all the caterpillars came out from the soil (my son loves to cut them up!). They looked pretty eerie when they all come out together!


I had to go into the partially flooded warehouse to push the accumulated rain water out (with the help of one security guard) and applied saw dust to absorb the water.


The plus side to the heavy downpour (besides the exercise that I did in the warehouse with the spade) is my plants got plenty of water and 3 more ladies fingers (okras) grew!